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Comment by fredley | Hacker News Reader

This is a complete 180 from the approach in the early iPhone, iPad days. Everything was encouraged and often required to be made device-specific, because the UX is subtly different. Apple followed this too, back in the heady days of Skeumorphism. Even the shade of grey on the keyboard was different between iPhone and iPad[1].

This is yet another indicator that Apple has changed drastically since the Jobs days, and is moving more into alignment with other tech giants in their approach to products.

[1]: https://ux.stackexchange.com/q/16369

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Microsoft has been failing at unifying desktop apps with mobile apps for many years with metro, UWP and whatever. Will be interesting if Apple can pull it off.

Apple has already proved they can do major software transitions gracefully with their adjustment from PowerPC to Intel.

I am not saying that's easy but unifying development for desktop and mobile seems harder. I think a lot of people have concluded that it's pretty much impossible because the needs are too different.

For developers this transition was quite seamless, since most of the high-level API functionality was still there. This isn't the case when you're ripping out the current UI framework that every app uses.

That was over ten years ago. The Apple of 2017 is a totally different company, and I don't think they're capable of pulling this off.

Throwing another data point — the recent transition to APFS was quite successful. There surely were problem cases, but the transition happened quickly and was transparent to end users.

The UI transition is tricky for developers to adopt. There will be legacy apps for decades to come as it will not be updated.

Perhaps after seeing the somewhat success of Microsoft in this arena, they are going to a "switchable" UI that will change depending on the device type. Instead of writing an app for iPhone, iPad, macOS, the developer just has to write one switchable app. That would be helpful for the developer, and if implemented right, the user wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

This functionality already exists to a degree in iOS. You can render different views based on the device / resolution. This would just be extending it to touch vs. keyboard and mouse.

I wouldn't think of it as a single UI that (doesn't) work for all devices, but rather a UI that knows what device it's on and can morph accordingly.

Apple's never been about the Developers (Developers! Developers!...) though, it's been about the users. It's a while since I've worked on Apple platforms, but it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. Apple — back then at least — had the user experience at the forefront of what they were doing. You endured the pain of writing your app in Objective C, in XCode, submitting it to the app store, paying the subscription fees, dealing with the terrible portals and jumping through many hoops because Apple's platforms were where the users were.

Microsoft's approach was always, "We're where the developers are, which is where the app(lication)s are, which is where the users will be forced to go".

It's hard to remember quite how much easier to use Apple's devices were in those early days compared to the status quo.

You endured the pain of writing your app in Objective C, in XCode

Heh, you think that's bad, I remember MPW and MacApp... thank God for CodeWarrior!

>but it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. Apple — back then at least — had the user experience at the forefront of what they were doing. You endured the pain of writing your app in Objective C, in XCode, submitting it to the app store, paying the subscription fees, dealing with the terrible portals and jumping through many hoops because Apple's platforms were where the users were.

Yes, I did those same things and found them as frustrating as you did. While I don't do iOS dev anymore, it has gotten a lot easier. Swift is an attempt to make a more modern, friendly language. Submitting to the App Store is mostly built into Xcode now, as is managing certificates. Their API/SDKs are top notch for the most part. Subscription fees were extended to include all Apple development (not just iOS). The portals still exist and haven't gotten any better.

The point I'm trying to make is Apple isn't as good to developers as Microsoft is, but they are definitely taking actions to move in that direction. Visual Studio is my favorite IDE by far, but Xcode is definitely taking cues from it.

"somewhat success of Microsoft in this arena"

MS has failed miserably. Windows phone is dead and Windows 8 was just a disaster. Windows 10 is just an attempt to salvage things.

Rhapsody, Yellow Box, Blue Box, Carbon, nothing has changed at Apple.

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